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Tanya Sweeney: We shouldn’t let lunch hour become extinct

Skipping your daily lunch hour means missing out on five hours of ‘me time’ a week

Eating lunch in front of your computer screen is a joyless exercise. Photograph: Getty

Tanya Sweeney
Sat Mar 13 2021 - 06:00

B pops his head around the door. “Do you want to stop for lunch?”

Well, of course I want to stop for lunch, but I can’t. I’m in the middle of writing a newspaper article, which, in brain terms at least, feels like I’m on foreign land. My head is very much in the game, my heart immersed in someone else’s story, my hands typing, crafting, cutting and pasting words. The friendly head around the door is well intentioned, but it breaks my reverie and focus. Stop for lunch? Pffft.

Instead, I will eat “al desko”, mindlessly scoffing something that B has sheepishly slid across the threshold (occasionally, I will power through and not bother eating lunch at all). As I bring the dishes downstairs, B is sitting in the kitchen, positively luxuriating in his full lunch hour, with its New Yorker, its coffee and its Liveline. Well for bloody some, I’ll think, fairly unreasonably. B is no more or less busy than I am, but he is protective of this break in the afternoon.

“You’re pretty good at finding time for yourself, aren’t you?” I say to him accusingly. Part of me is tempted to make this about gender; while I spend most of my time (and certainly most of my brain energy) Up On Deck, waiting for some perceived parenting crisis or domestic-related situation to detonate, B is particularly adept at pulling on his coat and telling me plainly that he needs a walk, or is going to get the paper, or that he will run (well, saunter at his leisure) to get milk.

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It’s not a gender thing. It’s a “being more efficient with your time” thing. It’s having enough self-respect that you take time, any time, for yourself. The thing is now that so many of us are working from home, I should imagine that lunch hour and, to a lesser extent, that lovely “me” hour is quickly becoming extinct.

Lunching al desko may seem like a smart way to beat the system and get on top of a workload, but here’s the thing.

If you don’t take a lunch break, and based on a five-day week of eight-hour working days, you’re effectively missing out on five hours of “me time” a week, and 30 days of annual leave. Although office workers believe they are being heroically dedicated or efficient by eating at their desks, there is a very definite price to pay.

Way before the pandemic, research commissioned in 2015 hinted that 62 per cent of American office workers ate lunch in the same spot they worked in all day. According to a survey in the UK commissioned by the National Charity Partnership, almost three in five employees eat lunch at their desks, giving reasons ranging from heavy workloads to the office culture.

The big irony of this pandemic is, while we seemingly have more time to ourselves, our lives can appear emptier and less rich than ever

In Ireland, we’re not much better: more than 50 per cent of us ate al desko while we worked in an office, according to a consumer survey. Until recently, France famously had a provision in its labour code that forbids workers from eating at their desks, but even the authorities there have since rescinded on the ban of allowing workers to eat lunch as they work.

Before you even look at the science, you know that eating lunch in front of your computer screen is a joyless exercise, and an opportunity for a small moment of sensory pleasure revoked.

Laura Archer, a worker at the Museum of London, founded the blog Gone For Lunch (which later became a book of the same name), after she realised that a simple lunch break would improve her working day dramatically. The blog’s modus operandi was simple: Laura was going to make the most of her 45-minute lunch break at work. Archer made up a list of things she had long wanted to do from learning a language and spending time drawing to getting to know the area.

The project eventually took on a life of its own, and pretty soon Laura found herself “weekending” on her lunch hour. She was soon learning how to knit, going to lunchtime lectures, and learning how to play chess. There’s a lot to be said for this approach to life, especially now.

The big irony of this pandemic is, while we seemingly have more time to ourselves, our lives can appear emptier and less rich than ever. Previously, I always believed I would exercise more, write a script or have a 10-step skincare routine if I only had more time. How jarring to realise I no longer have that excuse any more.

If life feels like one unending conveyor belt of work, homeschooling and Netflix, taking back our lunch hour feels like the best place to right that wrong. We were able to afford an hour of window shopping, a quick walk, or nipping out for a salad before. Even amid what I will simply refer to as All This, we should certainly be able to afford those very simple moments right now.

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